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I recently spoke to the Director of Sales of a new, successful CRM software. He said a key part of their marketing is PR and getting the media to talk about them.

We're building a software for small businesses, and I want to incorporate PR into our marketing. I'm compiling a list of influencers of who I need to reach out to. The list would include magazines, bloggers, trade associations and freelance journalists/software reviewers. But I'm not sure how I should approach them.

Should I just come out and tell them my intentions? I'm sure they get too many people looking for press, and it seems too one-sided also. How do I make this a win-win interaction? Or what should my approach be?

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2 Answers

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There are two things to keep in mind when you want to get a journalist/reviewer/blogger/etc to talk about you:

  1. Make a personal connection. These influencers get a lot of emails demanding their attention, and the best way to differentiate yourself from the spam is to show that you're interested in them. Follow their blog/twitter feed/column for a while. Mention a favorite post/tweet/article in your email. This indicates that you're a reader, that you know who they are and what they typically talk about.
  2. Make it worth their time. Use the knowledge you gained from following them to send them information they actually care about. So if you're contacting a blogger who has never done a product review don't ask for one now - instead, offer to do a guest post on something related to their typical content.

There are a ton of really useful articles on the web about this exact topic. Some of my favorites:

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And #3 Make sure it's the right person. If your product is for hairdressers, reach out to people in the fashion/design/style spaces. Find out if there are professional societies or conferences in that space. See who is participating and covering them. In that scenario, media and influencers who cover small business/entrepreneurs in general are much less applicable. – CaseySoftware Jan 2 at 2:48
Just what I needed thanks! – SKG Jan 2 at 13:54
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There is some PR that you or your staff can do yourselves. You can do the following:-

  1. Talk about your product in forums that are relevant

  2. Establish yourselves as experts in your space by answering questions / contributing to the knowledge base. There are several Q&A sites that have come up that you can post on.

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